PGA Tour Launches Rickie Fowler Network...No Wait, Skratch TV

The New York Times' Richard Sandomir says the "PGA Tour hopes that a new digital network will help bring it younger fans — those who prefer short videos to televised tournaments and footage of golfers whooping it up when they’re not characters in hushed-voice network broadcasts. These millennial fans want to watch golf differently from earlier generations who were weaned on the feats of Arnie and Jack."

And apparently, if you change the spelling of scratch to Skratch the juices just flow down Millennial River.

“We’ve had a healthy anxiety that we weren’t going to reach this generation with our traditional platforms,” said Rick Anderson, the tour’s executive vice president for global media.

Oh come on Rick, CBS dumped their theme. Yanni out.  Helmut VonLichten in. But go on...

“If we’re not producing content and putting our sport out there on platforms in ways that they’ll consume it, are we going to miss them?”

Did they ever watch before?

The concept as presented by Sandomir and in the press release below isn't all horrible. We all know the PGA Tour needs to spice up their presentation, speed up the sport and embrace more fun. A quick view of the initial videos suggests someone is eerily obsessed with Rickie Fowler.

Maybe that's where the K in scratch comes from?

Anyway, the theme for Skratch TV is, of course, all about short, cool, GoPro, etc... and no one over 34 is known to have a pulse much less a cool bone in their body.

Undoubtedly, some of the content will be really good and embedded here. They've got pros on the case, though joint venture suggests the Censors of Ponte Vedra could numb the content down.

To find them and keep them, the tour has begun a joint venture with Bedrocket, a digital entertainment company, to create an online network called Skratch TV. The deal will be announced Wednesday.

The goal of Skratch is “to be a storyteller in short, shareable ways,” said Brian Bedol, the founder and chief executive of Bedrocket. Videos focusing on golfers’ personalities and lifestyles and goings-on at tournaments away from the action will be posted on social media in hope of drawing people to the Skratch site, where they can see more.

Like most other things, this is millennial driven since golf is behind even MLB in reaching the only people who matter. But was the PGA Tour ever anywhere but in a distant fifth in reaching the coveted kids, regardless of the era? Sandomir writes:

According to a 2014 Doublebase survey by the media research company GfK MRI, only 20.2 percent of the tour’s television viewers are millennials — which the survey defined as people born between 1977 and 1994. That is the smallest share among the five organizations examined, which included the N.B.A., the N.F.L., Major League Baseball and Nascar. In addition, at 52.3, the mean age of tour viewers is the oldest.

Here is the full press release with some nice jargon. "Rich cooperation" is a keeper...

Skratch recently launched a social-platform beta, in conjunction with the Waste Management Phoenix Open and the Farmers Insurance Open. Delivered natively across Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Vine, and YouTube, the preview was bolstered by rich cooperation with GoPro, Callaway, and Farmers, and featured top pros Rickie Fowler, Ryan Palmer, Patrick Reed, Keegan Bradley and others.

Of the videos posted to YouTube, this one was almost spectacular and still fun. Next time, less Jason Day and more skydiver, please.